


drowning in words so sweet

by kit_marlowe



Category: Historical RPF, Shakespeare RPF | Elizabethan & Jacobean Theater RPF, Will (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, M/M, thats all i cannot say more, will shakespeare never balled a day in his life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-13
Updated: 2020-04-13
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:42:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23624815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kit_marlowe/pseuds/kit_marlowe
Summary: So I'll keep on damning the devil, and you'll keep on saying it's all right.-----Christopher Marlowe is a centuries-old vampire. Will Shakespeare is about to be London's favorite playwright. Also he's sexy. What could go wrong???????
Relationships: Christopher Marlowe/William Shakespeare
Comments: 8
Kudos: 23





	drowning in words so sweet

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wordaesthetic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wordaesthetic/gifts).



_Tell me why God created the Lovers._

_Tell me what Lovers are made for. Tell me if it hurt when Adam lost a rib, tell me if the apple was sweet when Eve bit in. What serpent taints us? What lies in the bushes, waiting, shedding scales?_

_I beg you flick your forked-tongue at me once more._

It was a dark and stormy night when it happened, rain turning the streets of London to mud. It was a night for ghosts. Ghouls and goblins. Gods and monsters…

Monsters.

Kit smiled at his reflection in his cup of wine, dark and shivering in the candlelight. Sweet demon… He met his eyes, rendered black in the liquid, as Shakespeare read the same line of poetry over, and over, and over, and this time with hardly any variation to warrant such. He could be so particular. But he was new at this. He would soon understand that plays needed most to be spat out in the first place.

He lifted his gaze from the monster and looked at Shakespeare sidelong. He was sitting at a desk, fingers slid into the dark tufts of his hair, brow furrowed. It was quite uncommon for a writer of such skill to also be handsome. To have a nose that sloped a perfect line, not too bulbous nor snub-like. Cheeks not too gaunt, not too round. Chin. Mouth. Yes, he was indeed all in proportion. He worried his lower lip between his teeth, the way he had been doing all night. It was becoming chapped. Dear…

“Do you intend on repeating that line like prayer all night?” Kit asked, finally, his voice cutting into Shakespeare’s muttering. It stopped. Kit watched his eyes slink shut in frustration. Or defeat. “They call you a Catholic, you know. I’m beginning to wonder if there is some truth to all of the whispering…”

“I’m not a bloody Catholic,” Shakespeare answered the way one answers a question they’ve been asked far too often.

“But you could worship as one,” Kit said. He took a drink of the wine, and it was terrible, as it had been the last time he took a drink a moment ago and had not learned. “That’s all there really is to it. How many Catholics do you think really believe in God?”

The thunder rumbled lowly. The storm was fading, but it had not ceased for some time, and the rain certainly still battered the abode that was truly little more than a pathetic hovel. Shakespeare was poor, indeed, poor enough to tempt Kit to take him home with him.

Though Shakespeare would never have that. Nor would Kit, until he had a death wish.

Shakespeare turned to look at him, leaning his cheek on his fist the way a brooding child might. His gaze drifted beyond where Kit lounged on a tiny couch.

“It’s five,” he moaned, apparently having noticed the time.

“Observant, you are.”

“I can’t write any longer,” he muttered. “My hands are broken. Do it for me?”

“My hands broke an hour ago—I am no longer of service to you.” Kit smiled at him. That was why he was here, after all. Helping Shakespeare with his new play… “Give it a rest.”

Shakespeare answered only in a pathetic moan. Tiredness shone under his eyes, dark and heavy, though Kit had noticed that when he first arrived when the evening was still fresh. He stressed tirelessly about his writing. And for good cause—this place was a hole.

Soon, the sun would be rising.

Kit realized this belatedly, far too belatedly, and then wondered how much damn wine he really had drank. Idiot. Idiot!

“I can’t,” dearest William was saying. Kit rolled his eyes. Such a devoted worker… “I have to finish the love scene. At least Lady Delilah’s monologue—I won’t have the inspiration for it tomorrow.”

Kit allowed himself the luxury of raising an eyebrow. “The inspiration?” Of course, he knew all too well the grief of attempting to write only to have it interrupted and never the same. But surely, William Shakespeare was above such difficulties… “The storm? Or your lack of sleep? The latter could surely be replicated.”

He watched Shakespeare avert his eyes, blue-green drifting. He studied the floorboards.

“The storm,” he said quietly. “Indeed, the storm… I…”

He returned his attention to the paper before him and Kit just groaned, tilting his head back. “For the love of God, Shakeshafte, you are going to fuck the muse to death.”

A huff of breath. “Then help me.”

Kit had _been_ helping him. The play was hardly anything short of a collaboration, and they had been trading lines all damn _night._ “Where are you?” As if he had not just listened to Shakespeare repeating it over and over. And over. And over.

“‘ _What more could want thou than to kiss me?’”_

Kit made a sound of disgust. “That’s terrible.”

“I know. I like the bit of… of alliteration...”

“Oh, fuck the alliteration. It’s far too direct for Delilah. She’s subtle, as we’ve discussed. She talks circles around her prey.”

Shakespeare snorted. “Leon is her _prey?_ ”

Oh, sweet William. He had no idea.

Kit studied him in the low light, shadows breathing shallow breaths against the walls, against the waves of Shakespeare’s hair.

“She is the most dangerous predator.”

“And so…?” Shakespeare took the pen into hand again. And then he was scratching at the paper, a sound that had become so charmingly familiar tonight.

“Well, I’m not going to write it for you.”

Which only elicited a heavy sigh from the man. Brow furrowing again, eyes tired and hazy yet hard. Kit watched his shoulders rise and fall with a deep breath. “ _‘Upon thy life,’”_ he muttered, writing again, _“a mistake most foul thou hast made. Upon my soul immortal, thou art mine.’”_

Oh, fuck him. It was perfect, indeed. Perfect, and terrible. Immortal souls… He felt his jaw clench, teeth gritting together.

_Thou art mine._

Shakespeare quieted, then, and merely the sound of the rain and the scratching pen filled the tiny room. Kit watched his hand move across the page. It shook, he could see. Thou art mine… Indeed, he could utter such a phrase, and the urge to do so peaked at his lips.

But he would not. Shakespeare did not understand that Kit’s coming here tonight was all part of a game, or that he was a vital player of a duel.

Soon, the sun would rise and render the game over, just for the night. Soon, he would be left to slumber in Shakespeare’s bed or perhaps the floor and hope he didn’t open the drapes when he inevitably woke first. It was too risky to leave, now. He reclined deeper into the couch, thumb sliding over the rim of the cup of wine.

“I want to kiss you,” Kit mumbled into the quiet.

The scratching stopped.

Shakespeare spared him only a peek of his eyes, before rolling them. “Shut up,” he huffed.

“I want to kiss you.” He said it again. Because he meant it, and he had nothing to lose.

It wasn’t as if he wanted to throw himself at William Shakespeare’s feet and begin spouting love declarations, but it was a little like that. He wanted to kiss the man that would surely be London’s greatest playwright. England’s greatest playwright.

“In the way of a sodomite?” Shakespeare asked it like a joke.

“Catholic, indeed.”

He turned his entire body in the chair, angling it to look at Kit more fully, eyes narrowed. Sleepy and annoyed. The readiness to fight pushed by the lack of rest.

“What are you getting at, Marlowe?” His voice was sharp. It did not suit him, but something in Kit burned from it, all the same.

He merely gave a breath, and examined the rings on his hand. It had been a foolish endeavor. But with the realization of its failure, something in him felt as though it were unraveling. Centuries, he had existed, a pathetic wretch of a man, and yet he suddenly felt more pathetic than ever. Something in his chest felt tight, something in the stillness of his heart.

He was aware of Shakespeare standing, rising slowly from the chair and approaching him the way one might a wild animal.

Predator.

Prey.

However Kit appeared, though he was trying his damnedest to seem unafflicted by any emotion, Shakespeare seemed to find something in him worth investigating. He stopped just beyond the couch. Kit could see him in his periphery—legs in black trousers, feet in leather boots.

Shakespeare’s voice was softer. “Marl—”

So was Kit’s. “ _Kiss me…_ ” It was a breath. A whisper. A weakness. He didn’t know why he wanted it so badly, he only knew that he would tantrum like a child if he didn’t get it. He would stomp home in the dawn along the soggy streets.

“You’re drunk.”

He felt a little sneer appear on his mouth. “Say what you would like to make my request more palatable to your ear—you will not be able to alter the truth in which I—“

It began with a hand cupping around his neck. Warm fingers, though potentially cold by human standards. It continued into William Shakespeare bending to his reclined height. It climaxed with a brush of lips.

A push of mouth against mouth.

A mingling of breaths, one of a man alive, one of a man dead.

The dead man withdrew first against his more sinful inclinations, and, burying his face into the crook of his arm on the arm of the couch, fell into a fit of half-muffled laughter.

Kit slept in William Shakespeare’s bed, that morning.

He slept to the sound of the pen scratching out the final scenes of the play. The kiss had merely been one, but in one it had been a thousand, in one it had been immortal. Kit would dream of it.

**Author's Note:**

> gang every fic i write is a vampire au and these are just facts. also did not even reread this i just cold posted
> 
> this fic was born in 2017 between me & my dear friend who we'll just call percy bitch shelley at like 4 in the morning, in which i gained most inspiration from stop me if you think you've heard this one before by the smiths for. some reason . . .in the almost THREE YEARS since then we now go to bed at normal hours & i finally rewrote and finished this fic (tho............................ i think im gonna make this prologue & get too into this story)
> 
> edit: oh my ao3 name really hittin different now


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